European Union Referendum Bill

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Monday 2nd November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Trenchard (Con)]

My Lords, I, too, wholly agree with what my noble friend Lord Flight said—that if we are going to extend the vote in the referendum to those United Kingdom citizens who live outside the United Kingdom, it should be extended to all of them. However, I do not feel that those who live outside the United Kingdom have quite an equivalent right to vote as those who live here. As democracy was being extended in this country, it was often said, “No taxation without representation”. I seem to remember that when I went to live and work in Japan, I stopped paying United Kingdom income tax fairly immediately, although I did have to pay Japanese income tax, which was at rather a higher rate.

I later became chairman of Conservatives Abroad in Japan, and asked for the franchise for those of us who were abroad for a relatively short time with the clear intention of coming back. If you have been abroad for a long time and made your life abroad and have no intention of coming back to the UK to live, your right to have your voice heard in a general election or referendum is somewhat less. There may well be a case for extending the franchise beyond 15 years to United Kingdom citizens abroad, but there are practical difficulties in tracing who they are. On which electoral register would they be if they no longer have any family members living in the area where they previously lived? It seems rather complicated, so I cannot support the amendments.

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

On the point about British citizens living in the EU, of course I go along with the principle of no taxation without representation, but many of our citizens who live on the continent worked in Britain all their lives, paid taxes all their lives and have gone to the continent to retire. So it is a bit hard to deny them the vote on the no taxation without representation ground.

[Lord Dobbs]

If they have gone to the continent to retire after an active working life in this country, the chances are that many, if not the majority of them, will still have the vote under the existing 15-year legislation. Not all of them, but very many.

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[Lord Blencathra]

I thank my noble friend for his intervention. He has considerable experience in these matters and I agree with him entirely.

To conclude, we need the Government’s forecasts of the competitive position of the UK if we stay in, tied to a European economy that is becoming progressively uncompetitive in world markets. We know Herr Juncker wants more Europe and more of the social dimension, as he said to the European Parliament. That would be all very well if the USA, China and the Asian economies were also awarding themselves more pensions, more paternity leave, shorter working weeks, higher pay and more social benefits, but they are not and Europe is in slow decline against their economies.

[Lord Liddle]

Has not what the noble Lord just said shown the need for an objective analysis of the facts? Britain has a trade deficit of something between 5% and 6% of GDP, whereas the euro area has, I think, a small trade surplus with the rest of the world. Germany and the Netherlands have massive trade surpluses. Frankly, what the noble Lord is saying is nonsense.

[Lord Blencathra]

I thank the noble Lord for his support. We need a factual analysis of a whole range of things. However, I merely suggest to the Committee that if the Government are tempted to accept the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, or a similar one, on producing a report on the consequences of leaving the EU—some of that would be speculative, as I have attempted to suggest—we also need a report on the consequences of staying in. In many ways that would be equally speculative, although no more so than the outcome of the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Hannay. Therefore, we must have the Government’s analysis of the consequences for the UK if that decline in the European economy continues.

The five presidents’ report envisages competitiveness authorities taking over wage and work conditions. I will not quote from the Commission press release of 21 October, but it talks about deepening the EMU, getting social fairness and paying greater attention to new macroeconomic adjustment programmes, as it did in Greece. We all know that worked very well. Therefore, we need the Government’s view on that aspect of the report.

The report goes on to say that we need adequate access to,

“adequate education and … an effective social protection system … in place to protect the most vulnerable in society, including a ‘social protection floor’”.

I therefore suggest that we need a UK government analysis of the consequences of those proposals when they are incorporated into a treaty. It is no good for the BSE campaigners to say that they will apply to eurozone countries only. The Commission will use the excuse, justification and treaty base of the single market, as it usually does, to make them apply to us, and we will not be able to stop it since the eurozone countries will have an in-built majority.

[Lord Blencathra]

The Government will respond to the Select Committee’s report, but that is different from an analysis of what the situation would be in this country if it were to take place. There may be similarities in the report we would make, but we still need that analysis of staying in the European Union.

I am almost concluded, noble Lords will be pleased to hear; at least I have provoked a bit of controversy in this debate. The five presidents’ report also talks about harmonising insolvency law, company law and property rights. We need an analysis of the dangers of that point.

In his speech two weeks ago, the Governor of the Bank of England noted that being in the EU had benefited us in the past. However, in the referendum we will be voting not on the EU’s past record but on what it will do for us in the future. What was most interesting in Mr Carney’s speech was the clear warning over further eurozone integration and its impact on the UK economy. He noted that the five presidents’ report states that there is “unfinished business” over further fiscal and financial integration in the euro area. The Bank’s report cautioned that the “necessary deepening” of integration, coupled with the,

“weight of … the members of the single currency”,

would impair the ability of the Bank to,

“meet its financial stability objective”.

I trust that the noble Baroness will question the Governor of the Bank of England on that statement in the Bank’s report. I look forward to reading the analysis.

[Lord Liddle]

As I understand it, the Chancellor of the Exchequer is going to Berlin today to explain that Britain supports this increased integration in the euro area because we have a strong national interest in the eurozone being an area of more dynamic growth. I just do not understand where the noble Lord is coming from, because his own leadership is arguing for this integration.

[Lord Blencathra]

The leadership is entitled to do so. The Prime Minister and the Chancellor are negotiating hard for changes on behalf of the British people and the country. When the Government set out the deal they achieve, if the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, is accepted and the Government set out the consequences of leaving, my amendment merely suggests that they should also set out as far as they can the consequences of staying in.

My very final point is that the EU has made it clear that there will be no treaty change before 2017 and possibly not before 2020. In that case, I should like to know how the Government will guarantee that the deal that the Prime Minister brings back will be incorporated into a binding treaty change. Any promises not in a treaty are not worth the wasted breath, in my opinion. So I want to see a section in the government report explaining how we can guarantee that we will actually get the changes that the Prime Minister secures.

I am sorry that I have taken so long. Again, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Hannay. His amendment is important. I think that all the amendments in this area are important, and I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.

[Lord Green of Deddington]

I shall describe Amendments 31 and 32, which stand in my name. In the earlier amendments in this group the Government are asked to set out the consequences of leaving the EU, and, as the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, said, it is only right and fair that they should set out the consequences of staying in. In my amendments I have selected two issues which I believe are likely to be extremely important to the public in general in reaching a decision on how to vote.

Amendment 31 addresses net migration, which, as most noble Lords will be aware, is about 330,000 a year. Of that figure, more than half—180,000, a number that has doubled in the last two years—are from the European Union. That figure is split more or less equally between the EU 14 and the new members in the A10. How that advances in the future, of course, depends on the economic developments in those two regions, but I think that the figures are likely to remain high unless something is done to reduce the level of low-skilled immigration from the European Union.

As noble Lords may know, 75% of immigration from the A10 and 25% of immigration from the EU 14 is low skilled, or certainly low paid, so there ought to be some scope there and the Government need to set out the effect on that low-paid immigration of their negotiations with the European Union. It is not just a matter of a large number of low-paid migrants without, at present, any break or limit on their numbers; what are important are the implications of the impact on the population of the UK, which will be huge. Noble Lords will have seen this very week the latest population projections prepared by the ONS. Based on net migration of 185,000 a year, it has told us that the population will increase by 2.5 million—more than twice the population of Birmingham—in the next five years and by nearly 10 million in 25 years’ time. Even that projection is based on some very optimistic numbers. The ONS thinks that immigration will be about 185,000 per year going forward, but the average over the last 10 years has been 240,000 and the current level is 330,000.Therefore, there will be a huge impact on the population, and, by the way, the same document shows that just over two-thirds of the future population increase will be as a result of immigration.

[Lord Liddle]

Is the noble Lord claiming that the extra population of 10 million will be due to EU migration? It seems to me that that is not the case: he is muddling together EU migration and migration from the rest of the world. Given that much EU migration involves young single people, does he think that in time the impact on the population from those people, some of whom may well go back to their own countries, is likely to be as significant as the impact from non-EU migration?

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[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

The noble Lord exaggerates to make his point. I am not arguing against economic forecasting. I am simply saying that the record on economic forecasting is not very good and the Bank of England is a classic example.

This is not about economic forecasting. This is about the effect on the United Kingdom’s economy of withdrawal from the European Union which is a huge issue. It is not just about the implications for the economy directly as a result of taxation or fiscal policy or matters of that kind. It is about the impact of immigration, it is about what happens in terms of the advantages that we would gain by being outside the European Union, our ability to negotiate our own trade agreements, our ability to be free of suffocating regulation, our ability to decide matters for ourselves, our ability to control our borders—all these things will have an impact on growth rates and the future of our economy. I am simply arguing that the Office for Budget Responsibility does not have the expertise or the ability to do that. I am delighted that the noble Lord supports my noble friend Lord Blencathra’s amendment looking at the other side of the equation, which is staying in.

I will repeat a point I made earlier. It is astonishing to me that we are members of the European Union and the arguments that we have heard from the Europhiles—the people who wish to remain in the European Union—have all been characterised in terms of the threats of leaving rather than the benefits which we have. That seems to indicate a degree of uncertainty.

[Lord Liddle]

I do not know who the noble Lord has been listening to about threats. It seems to me that the pro-European people are making a very modern argument for our membership of the European Union—a case which is far stronger than it was when we originally joined—that in this really dangerous world with chaos in Africa, fanaticism in the Middle East and rising nationalism in Russia, what we should be doing is sticking with our friends and acting as a united Europe.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

We do not have to be in the European Union to stick with our friends, and NATO is a good example of that. I am not referring to the general debate, I am referring to the amendments—for example the amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, to insert a new clause headed:

“Report on the consequences of the United Kingdom withdrawal from the European Union”,

but not to report on the benefits of being in the European Union.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

May I just finish answering this point first? I am simply making the point that it is very startling that those who are most enthusiastic about the European Union wish to couch their arguments in terms of what it would be like if we left as opposed to why it is in our interests if we remain.

[Lord Liddle]

There is a very simple reason for that which is that most of the anti-European case that is put forward suggests that it is cost-free to come out of the European Union. That is why these arguments are being pressed; if you listen to the way a lot of people talk who favour withdrawal, they think it is cost-free. They assume we can negotiate anything we want. It is they who are not facing up to the realities of the world.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

I have to say that cost-free would be a considerable improvement on the £8 billion net contribution that we are currently making because it is certainly not cost-free to remain in.